


Close Quarters

by Milieva



Series: From Guru to House-Husband [6]
Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Pre-Relationship, The slow burn continues, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieva/pseuds/Milieva
Summary: No matter how much planning they had done, nothing had prepared Umi or Clef for the reality of moving into their small Kyoto apartment and building a new life together.
Relationships: Clef/Ryuuzaki Umi
Series: From Guru to House-Husband [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690990
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	1. March

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little later than I promised, because I've failed to work on anything about this story in order. 
> 
> I've nearly finished a story that takes place later in the series, but this has been left to marinate a bit longer than intended. 
> 
> A bit thank you to Down, as always, for the beta read and suggestions. 
> 
> And another thank you to Olivia for some cute plot ideas.

Standing in the middle of their new apartment, Umi stared at the mountain of boxes surrounding her. They'd done a bit of shopping before their move, but she hadn't thought they had accumulated _this_ much stuff. "This can't all be ours," she said. "There must be some mistake."

"It probably is. It takes up so much more space to transport things safely here," Clef said, not looking up as he busily tapped his phone screen before holding the phone closer and announcing, "We've arrived in our new home." He frowned at something that had appeared - probably the text generated by his words - before tapping away at it a few seconds longer then tucking the phone into his pocket.

Umi cocked her head and stared at him. "Who are you telling we arrived?" she asked. She'd already called her parents while they were waiting for the movers to unload their things.

Clef pulled his phone back out and pulled up a picture of the boxes, framed in a very familiar app. "Hikaru, mostly."

"How long have you been on InPic?" Umi snatched the phone out of his hand. 

Scrolling down to the start of the pictures felt a little like intruding on Clef's thoughts, which was silly because his account was completely public. Even without the comments from strangers, he must know that other people could see what he was posting, yet what he chose to post seemed fairly personal - snippets of his daily life, though no one's faces appeared aside from occasionally his own - there were a couple of short videos without any tags or labels where he spoke in Cephiran, obviously aimed at the people back home. She couldn't even understand those.

"Hikaru helped me set it up," Clef explained. "She sends through pictures of Cephiro in return, every so often." 

Umi rolled back up to the top, looking for his username, but paused. Just by several photos of packing their things for the move, shots of bubble wrap and boxes, was a photo where the comment was just a heart and two rings. It was a shot of two hands - their hands - clasped together, wedding rings gleaming; from the clothes they were wearing it must have come from one of the after-parties, but she didn't recognise the shot.

Also a whole bunch of her friends seemed to have commented on it. Mostly congratulations, but a few of them said something like 'hope the hangover wasn't so bad!'

"This wasn't one of the official photos," she said, slowly. "Where'd you get this?"

"One of your friends; I'm not sure who. I'd had a lot to drink, so I don't know who I exchanged contact details with. Half of them put themself in my contacts, but I think they were competing to see who could have the most confusing nickname in. But I'm glad they did, I really liked that photo." Clef's fond smile made Umi's chest feel tight. "I didn't want to put your face on the internet, though, so I just used that bit."

Taking the phone back, he flicked through his pictures file and brought one image up before handing it back to her. 

Umi stared down at a beautiful photo of the two of them laughing together, hands clasped so tightly, almost leaning against each other. They looked happy - the very image of a newlywed couple.

"I can't believe Hikaru didn't tell me she set you up," she made herself grouch, pulling her own phone out and opening the app too, meaning to follow him.

"Oh. You have InPic?" Clef asked, leaning over her shoulder to tap the top of the screen to pull up the search bar. "What's your username?"

Umi pulled up the search and followed him, then just pointed to the notification on his screen. Clef tapped the right button to follow her back and smiled at her as brightly as he had in that photo.

"Do you want me to send you all the photos I've been given?"

Forcibly ignoring the butterfly feeling in her stomach, Umi nodded, turning away so he wouldn't see her cheeks flushing. "Later, though. We should do some unpacking. If we sort the boxes, we can each take one area at a time."

*

Clef failed to feel surprised when Umi's assumption about the number of boxes proved correct. Umi's parent's had promised to send them a television, which accounted for one of the ones they hadn't packed themselves, but they also found two labelled "Open first" and "Open next".

"Why do I get the feeling Mama's done something sneaky?" Umi said, taking a pair of scissors to the first one.

Clef's lips twitched. "Experience, perhaps?" Even he knew enough of Umi's mother by now that her having arranged some surprise was, in itself, not at all surprising.

He sat down beside her and couldn't help but laugh when the box turned out to contain presents from their friends.

The first wrapped gift was a rectangular box that came with a card from Hikaru that said 'So Clef doesn't have to wait too long for a cup of tea. Congratulations!'

Umi started to giggle when she unwrapped it to find a kettle. "Guess we can cross that off the shopping list."

"Does it need cleaning before we can use it?" 

"I'll look through the instructions when we've opened the rest of these. We don't even know if there's any tea in here." 

"Oh, I packed tea to bring with us."

Umi shook her head at him, but she was grinning. "Of course you did."

She turned out to be right about the tea, too. The next box was bigger and had notes of congratulations from both Fuu and Ferio. It contained an assortment of snacks, both sweet and savoury, and several different types of tea that Clef hadn't tried yet.

"I wonder which of these boxes has the mugs in them," Clef said.

"For the tea, or for this?" Umi asked, pulling a large bottle of something alcoholic-looking out of the corner of the box. She pulled the note off it and passed it to him. "What's it say?"

Clef read the first line and burst out laughing. "Caldina says we aren't supposed to let LaFarga know about this because he told her not to, since you're underage, but a bottle of wine is a traditional gift to new couples in Chizeta." Cephiro had a similar tradition, one that he wasn't going to mention.

The label on the bottle looked familiar. He was pretty sure it was the same wine that one of Hikaru's brothers had brought over to Cephiro to compare it with their uinka wine.

"I'm going to agree with LaFarga and say we should wait to enjoy it." 

"We were drinking the other night, before the wedding. You didn't complain then." 

"A small toast is one thing. Opening this bottle with just the two of us to drink it is just asking for us to both feel very, very ill the next day." Clef plucked it out of Umi's hand and set it aside. "We should keep it until we've reason to open it with a number of guests, at least."

"I guess. It is pretty large." Umi wrinkled her nose at him, but didn't argue more.

It was a convenient excuse for not wanting to share the bottle with Umi. Not only did he want to avoid saying something he shouldn't, Clef wanted to at least save it for a better celebration than just moving to a new place together as friends.

The second box contained a kitchen knife from Presea, with a note extolling its virtues, a kitchen herb growing kit from Ascot, and a stationary set and pen from both Caldina and LaFarga - presumably this was the gift he knew about - with a note that insisted they keep in touch.

The last gift was the largest box of all. The little card accompanying it read:

> Hikaru says these flowers are blooming this time of year, so I thought this would not only be practical, given your dependence on tea, but could also serve as a memento of your celebration.
> 
> Eagle sends his congratulations as well.
> 
> Yours in friendship, Lantis

Clef smiled at the card, and Umi leaned over to look at it.

"Is this one from Lantis?" she asked.

"Yes, and Eagle also sends congratulations." Setting the card aside, Clef carefully unwrapped the box. Inside was a beautiful tea set decorated with the flowers that had coated the trees when they got married. Cherry blossoms, he now knew.

"I guess we don't need to go looking for your second tea set. This would definitely work for guests." Umi picked one of the cups up out of the box. "I wonder when they planned all this?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they had discussed it for the past several months," Clef said, putting the cup back in the box so he could put the lid on it. His chest felt a little too tight when he looked at it. Lantis's standing in the Guard was still precarious as it was; throwing his support behind Clef was bound to do him harm politically if it was known. Especially supporting Clef's relationship with Umi.

But all the same, their friends had marked this change in circumstance in a very traditional way.

"These are moving gifts," Clef said, stroking the lid of the box fondly. "Perhaps a bit more practical than if you'd moved into my apartment in Cephiro, but still marking that change all the same."

*

Umi blinked at Clef. She'd never considered moving in with him in Cephiro, but it wasn't a ridiculous idea. They had always spent so much time together that it made confusing but perfect sense. Long talks over tea before bed would be a lot more convenient if the walk to bed was just down the hall rather than half the castle away.

"Why wouldn't they give us practical gifts if we were in Cephiro?" she asked.

A wistful smile teased at the corners of Clef's mouth. "In Cephiro, I have all the kettles and tea sets and writing paper I could need." Shaking his head like he was trying to get rid of the memory, he got to his feet. "I'll take the kitchen and do the washing up, so we can use the mugs."

"You just really want a cup of tea," Umi teased, which was enough to get a laugh from him. "I'll do the bedroom then." Umi bounced up, leaving Clef to the kitchen.

She busied herself in the bedroom putting away their clothes and making note of what additional baskets and things they might need to keep things organised on the closet shelves.

The only pause came when she reached Clef's underwear. It wasn't even the underwear itself that made her stop, but the realisation that if Clef was going to be doing their washing, he was going to be handling _her_ underwear on a weekly basis. She wasn't exactly sure how she felt about that.

"It's just laundry, right?" she muttered, and turned to grab another box.

*

Once all the boxes were broken down and stacked in the corner to wait until recycling day, the main room looked bare. Beside the television, there was only a game system on the floor next to it, a couple of floor cushions, and the small kotatsu from Umi's bedroom.

Clef carried his tea and the snacks over to the kotatsu, as it was the only table they had. "We probably need some more furniture."

"Definitely," Umi said, sitting down on the other side fo the table with her own mug of tea. She looked around the room. "We at least need something to put the TV on, and a sofa."

"And a desk with some chairs. Pots, pans, and a rice cooker would also be good," Clef said, and Umi laughed.

"Yeah, eating is probably more important than somewhere to sit. We might be able to get some of those all in one department store and pick up groceries, but there's furniture shops and electronic shops… Even the hundred yen shops sell pots and pans." She got up and vanished to the bedroom, coming back a moment later with her phone. "For tonight, we could have pizza and work out a plan of attack for shopping tomorrow, work out where we want to go look?"

"I like that idea."

Once Umi had placed an order for their food, they started making a list of what they needed to get, including some basic groceries to get through the next few days while they settled in, and then Clef could go out and do a proper shop after they actually had implements to cook with.

Umi's parents had set them a budget to spend setting up the place, and then they would get a monthly allowance until Umi finished university. It was enough to keep the two of them well enough, from what he could tell, but only if they paid attention to what they were spending and planned it properly.

"We're going to have to go pretty cheap with everything," Umi said, scrolling through the website of a local department store.

"We don't have to get everything now." Clef looked at the prices, trying to remember how much money they had to work with before just going to fetch his datapad to consult the budgeting application Umi's mother had helped him set up to keep track of their finances. "The kitchen things should be first, then we can get the bigger things next month once we have a better idea what we'll be spending month to month."

Umi looked around the room. "Are you okay with that?"

"It's not like I'll be trapped in this apartment sat on the floor all day during your lessons." Clef pointed to the window, trying not to laugh. "There's a lot to go and see, and I'm perfectly able to go out on my own to do so."

"I know that! But you're still going to be spending a lot of time here on your own."

"It's only a few months. I'll be fine. If we have the money for it we can buy things, but a sofa looks expensive. We could always get some floor chairs first if that would make you feel better about me sitting around, but we should make sure you have what you need to study first." Clef reached over and lay his hand on hers.

A flicker of heat ran through him at the touch, and he swallowed down any thoughts that went with it.

*

Umi's breath caught in her chest at the brush of Clef's fingers against her skin, that picture of their hands clasped so lovingly flashing in front of her eyes. Her heart thundered in her chest and heat spread through her whole body, the touch reminding her that unlike in that photo, they were alone. 

Tonight, when they went to bed, Clef would be lying beside her. Like he had in the hotel, where she'd almost asked him-

She looked up to meet Clef's gaze and swallowed.

Clef's eyes had gone slightly wide, and he pulled his hand away and turned his attention to his tablet, opening an app, then swearing, and closing it to open a different one.

Not knowing what to say, Umi was relieved when the buzzer rang and she had an excuse to leave, heading down to fetch the pizza.

By the time she came back with the food, Clef was setting a couple of cups of tea on the table and the smile he gave her was just a normal, comfortable expression which didn't make her heart race. The weird little bubble of tension from earlier had burst nearly as soon as it appeared.

But it didn't stay gone for long.

After eating, they worked together to get the sheets and duvet covers on their bedding before laying the two futon out on the bedroom's tatami floor. The room had seemed a lot bigger before most of the floor space was covered. Maybe she should have paid better attention to the room sizes when they were looking for a place, because she was going to be sleeping in arm's reach of Clef for the next four years.

She flinched when Clef tapped her on the shoulder.

"Didn't you say you wanted the bath first?" he asked.

"Right. Yes." Umi hastily grabbed pyjamas and fled.

She hadn't thought this through. Maybe they should have gone for a two bedroom apartment even if it stretched the budget more, where, at the very least, they'd have their own room to retreat to.

*

Clef was relieved when the pink night clothes Umi took with her to the bathroom turned out to be a long-sleeved shirt and trousers, not the nightgown from a week ago. He wasn't sure he could make it through another night of her wearing that without saying something, probably so awkwardly he ended up sleeping in the main room and then getting on the train back to Tokyo the next morning. 

He spent his bath trying to push aside the thought of telling her how good it looked on her, and how much it made him want to touch her, to trace that lace around the bodice and slid his hands under the teasingly short hem. She wasn't even wearing it, but the image continued to haunt him until he had to do _something_ to calm his body before it made the coming night more awkward than it already promised to be.

When he eventually dared leave the bathroom, body back under control, Umi was sitting at the low table and flicking through menus on the television far faster than he could read them.

"I made tea," Umi said, motioning to the two steaming cups beside her. "I thought you might like some?"

"Thank you." Clef knelt down on the cushion.

"I set up the television, if you wanted to watch something before we go to bed?" She was looking firmly at the screen, not at him. "Or you can go to sleep, I'll do my best not to wake you up when I come in."

Was she having second thoughts about their sleeping arrangement too?

Picking up his cup of tea, Clef said, "I could sleep out here if it would be more comfortable."

"No, it's fine." Umi shook her head. "It's silly to be awkward about it. We've shared a bed before, after all."

"A whole room's a bit bigger than that." He was trying to convince himself as much as Umi.

Umi laughed, her cheeks definitely going pink. "I don't know, that bed at the hotel was pretty big."

"But the one at your parents wasn't."

"I got a message from Satomi saying there was a new drama on Webflix we might like," Umi said, not acknowledging his statement. Her cheeks went a darker shade of red as she picked up the remote control.

Cradling the cup in his hands, Clef swallowed, and tried to follow her example and drop the conversation. After all, there wasn't a good way to say that nothing would happen between them unless she asked him, without admitting that he would want something to happen. As that was only going to pressure her into thinking about it, he would just put it aside. Their relationship was worth so much more to him than the brief pleasure of going to bed with someone.

For now, they stayed up with the table between them, watching episode after episode of this new drama series until they were both far too tired to do anything but fall asleep the moment they lay down.

*

Umi woke earlier than she wanted to the next day, but that meant she could get dressed and go grab them breakfast from the conbini down the road and not face a cutely ruffled, half-asleep Clef until he'd managed to drink at least one cup of tea and wake up some. 

Shortly afterwards, they were standing in the middle of the rice cooker aisle arguing about which one to buy. That was far easier to deal with.

She didn't know why she was surprised that Clef had such strong opinions on cookware.

"This one's cheaper!" Umi said, pointing to the one she thought they should choose.

"We want something that will last for more than a year." Clef held up his phone to show her the web listing of the one he wanted. "Not only does this one have more features, it has a lot more stars, and reviewers actually like it."

Umi pulled a face at him and got out her phone to look up the one she wanted. It was just a rice cooker. How different could they be?

His did have more five-star reviews. She grimaced at them. "Aren't we supposed to be saving money?" 

"We'll save more money if we don't have to replace our rice cooker when it breaks in a year." Clef picked up the box for the one he wanted and started to move.

"How do you know that one won't?"

"I don't. But the other one likely will."

Umi scrolled down the reviews for the other one and sighed. Half of the top reviews said that it made terrible rice. Why did anyone even sell something so bad? 

Because people like her who didn't read the reviews before coming out would buy it.

She shoved her phone back into her bag and went after Clef. He was the next aisle over, looking at the ruffliest apron she'd seen.

"What do you have there?" she asked.

"I need an apron," Clef said, holding it up. Light blue with dark blue hearts and stars stitched around the borders, it was kind of cute. "I like this one."

Umi fought back a giggle. "Nice ruffles."

"They are nice, aren't they," Clef agreed, looking at the seams. "Very even gathering, it's impressive. I wonder how they get it that neat without magic? Some kind of machine, I guess. You have so many machines here."

Umi nodded, lips twitching. "Yeah, it does have even gathering."

Clef looked down at the apron and frowned. "What's wrong with it?" he asked.

"I'm sure you'll look very cute in it," Umi told him. Laughing, she grabbed his hand to tug him away. "Come on. You can tell me how I'm wrong about frying pans next."

*

In the end, it took them three trips to get everything they had on their list for that day. They kept having to stop and go back to the apartment when they had as much as they could carry.

Carrying the boxes for the dining table that could double as a desk and chairs back to the apartment turned out to be far more work than Clef had anticipated. A weight that had seemed manageable when they left the shop not only seemed to increase on the trip back, but was made even worse by the awkwardness of keeping a grip on the boxes.

"I still don't understand why we needed another table right now when we already have the kotatsu," Umi complained, setting her armful at the base of the stairs. "We can eat at the same table I use to study."

"I don't care how many times you say 'It's fine'. You will not want to put all your books and papers away for every mealtime."

"But-" 

"I've done enough paperwork in my life to know putting it away and getting it out again isn't worth it," he said, and Umi huffed, but didn't say anything more. Clef looked down at the two boxes on the floor. "I can come back and get those after I take these up."

"I can do it." Umi picked both chair boxes back up and rushed up the stairs in front of him.

"You'll hurt yourself if you're not careful," Clef called after her.

"Which of us does sport more often?" echoed back down the stairwell.

Clef followed as quickly as he could, stopping at the top of the stairs to catch his breath while she unlocked the door just down the corridor. "That's not an excuse to be reckless."

"It's just a couple of boxes." Umi pulled a face at him and disappeared into the apartment.

By the time Clef made it through the door, she already had the kettle on.

Tea revitalised them enough to face putting the furniture together, and Clef was impressed by how easy to follow the instructions were. It didn't matter that he could barely read the Japanese in the little booklet, as every direction was shown in clear pictures.

Handing him a clear bag of assorted little pieces, Umi said, "You start sorting those, and I'll go find the screwdriver we bought."

"What about the hammer?"

"That's definitely in my handbag," she said, rummaging through the shopping bags from earlier. "It was hitting my leg all the way home."

Clef carefully separated out the little bits according to the instructions, and had them mostly sorted by the time Umi returned.

"I still think we should get the sofa that was in the blue cloth," Clef said, renewing the debate they'd started in the shop.

"We should go with that grey one, from the first place," Umi countered.

Clef picked up one of the corner brackets and carefully screwed the fastener into the hole while Umi looked over the instructions herself. "You liked the blue one better," he said.

"And the grey one was seven thousand yen cheaper," Umi argued.

"But it only comes in that strange brown-like grey. If we're picking something we plan to keep for a while, it's better to go with something we like, not just something that's cheap." Clef held the corners together while Umi connected them. "Personally, I still think the one with the cushions over the arms was more comfortable than either of them."

"What, the one that was in green in the showroom? That one was sixty-five thousand yen. That's far more than will fit in the moving budget my parents gave us, unless you have some grand plan of how we can eat for hardly anything for a month."

"Or we could wait two months for the sofa we want," Clef suggested. Once they'd tapped the pegs in, he turned the frame over and set it into the tabletop. "If I'm going to have to sit on it for four years, I'd like to at least enjoy sitting on it. One of the fabric options was that really dark blue - you liked that one, didn't you?"

Umi rolled her eyes and twisted her tool around to fasten the tabletop to the frame. "Fine. If we're throwing out the grey one, the one that was blue when we saw it was still a lot cheaper than the other. Wouldn't that one be fine?"

"I would accept it rather than the grey one, but the green one would be more comfortable." Clef picked up the first table leg and carefully started twisting the connections with the tool that came with the table. "I'm willing to wait a couple of months for the comfortable one when we can just use the floor seats in the meantime." They, fortunately, had needed no assembly, and made sitting at the kotatsu a lot more comfortable when he could lean back on something.

Umi pulled a face, pinching her lips together. "Fine."

Clef picked up the next leg. "It doesn't have to be the green one. We could keep looking."

Taking the tool out of his hand, Umi fastened the leg to the table. "You like the green one," she said. "And since you're the one who has to look at it all day, I guess we can wait to get that one."

"In the dark blue?" 

She grinned, suddenly. "We could get it in that bright yellow and green-" 

"Dark blue it is," he said, in a hurry.

*

Once the table and chairs were assembled, Umi and Clef took a step back to admire their handywork.

"Maybe the table wasn't such a bad idea," Umi said, putting her hands on her hips. Having it taking up space made it feel more like a home somehow, less an empty room.

"Are you admitting I was right?" Clef's eyes glittered with mischief as he grinned at her.

"Oh, shut up." A hot flush heated Umi's cheeks. Why did that smile make her heart beat faster? "I agreed to buying it, didn't I?"

"You argued with me the entire time." 

"But you have to admit it would have been easier to have it delivered."

"But we wouldn't have had it for our first proper meal," Clef said, and clapped his hands together. "Right! I have to go shopping anyway, so what would you like for our first home cooked meal?"

"Aren't you tired?" Umi asked.

Clef looked about as exhausted as she felt after their traipsing around all day, but he just shrugged. "We need to eat, even if I am tired."

"That's what shops are for." Umi took his hand, leading him to the door, then dropped it once she'd realised what she'd done. "Come on, we can get something from the conbini. The food looked pretty good, and there's lots ready to eat." 

"Oh, please," he said, with a groan that made her flush - though he didn't seem to notice, pulling his shoes on in the genkan. "That sounds like the best idea I've heard all day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The draft of this story is still in progress, so the updates probably won't be regular as I am fighting Sanctuary into submission and working on other projects at the moment. But I hope you enjoy this little bit of fluffy nonsense. 
> 
> I hope you all are doing well. ❤️


	2. Extra Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd planned to fit this into the next chapter of this, but April wandered off in a different direction, and I am still working on it. But this was a cute little interlude that definitely fits before April. 
> 
> But I thought it would be a fun thing to share to celebrate Ryuuzaki Umi's birthday, and my and Down's wedding anniversary.

Sharing such a small space with Clef meant Umi started noticing little things that had escaped her attention before they moved to Kyoto.

Like the way Clef talked to himself as he read.

At first, she'd assumed it was just part of his language learning process, as she was mostly hearing him sound out words or read out definitions, but as his Japanese improved, more and more of his mutterings were about characters' decisions and plot directions. Umi was used to Clef quietly muttering comments over the content of reports as he worked through them back in Cephiro, but she'd never realised it translated to all of his reading. Then again, she'd never spent time with him reading fiction before.

Either way, it was a comfortingly familiar sound. Something she hadn't realised she missed until it was a feature of her evenings again.

Shortly after they'd moved into their new apartment Clef's reading skills (and his skill with a Japanese dictionary) got far enough that he started picking up books from the collection Umi had brought with them, instead of reading almost entirely on the tablet where he could look things up in the dictionary without having to write the characters in or look them up by radical or stroke count. 

As he made that shift from reading ebooks on his tablet to reading paperbacks, Umi noticed another habit.

Clef would turn the page and stare at the words up close and then stretch his arms back out further away, all the while squinting at the page as he worked his way through it, exactly the way Papa had started to do a few years ago - before he got reading glasses.

It would explain why he preferred using his tablet or Umi's computer rather than one of their phones to look anything up, and also why he kept his ebook font so large. She'd thought it was just so he could see the kanji better - and it probably was, but not just because they were unfamiliar to him.

But it was a problem she knew how to fix.

*

One morning, a couple of days after she'd noticed Clef squinting to read, Umi wandered over to the closest 100 yen shop and picked up three pairs of the same reading glasses in different magnification levels.

Clef was hanging up the washing when she got back. The sight of him out on the balcony with his little frilly apron on was the easiest way to put a smile on Umi's face. He just looked so cute; it wasn't something she'd ever imagined, Clef in an apron looking so domestic and peaceful. It almost made her glad for everything that had happened, just so she got to see this side of him.

While he was busy, set the glasses out on the table with two books and one of the 'weekly shopping deals' leaflets he'd started collecting from the grocery stores for him to test them with, and then sat down at the table to wait.

When he came back in, folding the collapsable laundry basket to set it aside, he stared at her in confusion. "What have you got there?"

"Thought these might help with your reading problem," Umi said.

"Reading problem?"

Umi's face went hot, and she wondered if maybe she should have talked with him before jumping forward with a solution for something that might be her leaping to an incorrect conclusion. "You seemed to be struggling to focus on small print, so I got some glasses for you to try," she babbled. "I got a few different ones so you could try them out and see what works best. If they don't help, you might need to see an actual optometrist for a prescription pair, but they make these for most people who just need a little help reading."

"Oh. That could be helpful." Clef set the basket down and sat down in the chair across from her and picked up one of the pairs. "They all look the same?"

"Yeah, but they have different magnification levels. See these?" She tapped the numbers on the stickers stuck to the corner of the lens. Picking up the lowest strength, she handed them to Clef. "Here, try these first."

Carefully unfolding the glasses, Clef slid them on.

"I just assumed your body was basically the same as you look like, but you're really just an old man in disguise, aren't you?" Umi said, trying to keep herself on task rather than just staring at Clef.

If nothing else, he looked really good in glasses.

"Yes and no," Clef said, picking up the book. "Changing my physical appearance affects most of my body so it works as someone the age I look, but some things can't be easily changed."

"You're not suddenly going to go ancient and grey on me in a few years, are you?"

"Honestly, I have no idea. I've not been this far from Cephiro in centuries, if ever." He took off the first pair and tried the second. "But either way, I think you just made my life much better."

Clef smiled at her, and Umi's face went even hotter.

"These just came from the 100 yen shop, we can always get something better. And we can get your eyes properly checked out at some point, see if there's something even better they can do," she said, pulling the case out of the bag and sliding it across the table. "To keep them safe in your bag."

"Thank you," Clef said, his voice full of heartfelt gratitude.

He tried on all the pairs about three times before he settled on the middle one, and immediately put them to use reading through his new recipe book as he wrote out a grocery list for the week.

*

The unfortunate side effect of Clef's new glasses was that Umi kept finding herself staring at him over the next few days as he started wearing them regularly any time he needed to read something. It was like she'd been reminded how attractive he was all over again.

Clef was cute on most days, but his glasses not only magnified text to twice its size, they magnified Clef's cuteness level by the same amount and it made Umi feel so fidgety she wanted to ruffle his hair or just scream.

She was going to have to find some way of working off those feelings if she was going to survive the next four years.

**Author's Note:**

>  **To be continued...**  
>    
> ☆°•. Is there anything you want to see in Umi and Clef's new life living together? .•°☆


End file.
